Sunday, February 26, 2012

Postcard week 8 Cuba

I remember the Bay of Pigs although I was really to young and naive to understand what it was all about. Didn't know about a Catholic program called Pedro Pan (Peter Pan) to bring Cuban children to the US for safekeeping while political turmoil was going on over Battista and Castro until researching about Ana who was 13 at the time. She and her sister arrived here during another turmoil, Civil Rights Movement.

I was studying Ana's work in Art School and her murder affected me a lot. Violent relationships were happening around me. A couple of students at the time were murdered by their boyfriends. The feminist movement in the art world was having an influence on women. But to have such a violent death and an acquittal of her husband is a travesty and so unjust. But it happens everyday, somewhere.

http://www.coldwar.org/articles/60s/PedroPlan.asp
http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/news/2010-10-12/ana-mendieta/
The images on my card are from google.com These are 3 links on my research of Ana:
http://www.virginiamiller.com/exhibitions/1990s/AnaMendieta.html
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1358840

cubatransnational.blogspot.com/p/lourdes-gil.html

Jaruco Caves work found here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=1YWTLSGIaZ4C&pg=PA97&lpg=PA97&dq=jaruco+caves+cuba+with+ana+mendieta&source=bl&ots=Z06WElQM6b&sig=8mEWJt7N3QpsvzhN8MTapey2vKM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JK5KT4qpNM-Itwfh5vDuAg&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=jaruco%20caves%20cuba%20with%20ana%20mendieta&f=false

But here,
covered by the earth whose prisoner I am
I feel death palpitating underneath
the earth.

And so,
As my whole body is filled with want of Cuba
I go on to make my work upon the earth,
to go on is victory.

Poet Lourdes Gil
Havana, Cuba 1951

To Ana Mendieta, Who was Pushed Over a Window by an Artist’s Hand

Because I knew you as a child
I never believed you had become a woman
a woman
who carved sculptures in the mud
ominous sculptures
drawn in blood.
I saw your rage long before exile
before the orphanage or Carl
before your art transformed the topography of Iowa
before the Grand Prix
before Rome.
I watched you from your cousin’s porch
in Havana (the city
was not yet in ruins)
as you returned home late after detention

set apart from us
anger a suspended halo over your mouth and eyes.
Anger a formidable presence mushrooming
on the desolate walls of your Sullivan Street apartment
after I found you in New York.
Following, trailing you back to Cuba
transformed into graceful Arawak
the legends you inscribed on the Jaruco caves.
Because I saw your rage
I found it difficult to laugh
when you told stories
of the orphaned years in Iowa
and ripped the past apart into a joke.
I saw the violence you carried ‘round your neck
like Sisyphus his stone.
And though I was shocked beyond belief
the morning I heard about the brutal crash
—your body falling
scorching flash of indigo and red
in the pitch dark
your naked, interrupted body breaking up
into a clump
a thunder noise over the deli’s roof
your last sculpture spread on humid tar—
I cannot say
the end
was entirely unpredictable.